We are going to be talking about everything next generation FIREWALLS! (NGFW).
A traditional firewall provides stateful inspection of network traffic. It allows or blocks traffic based on state, port, and protocol, and filters traffic based on administrator-defined rules.
A next-generation firewall (NGFW) does this, and so much more.
In addition to access control, NGFWs can block modern threats such as advanced malware and application-layer attacks. According to Gartner’s definition, a next-generation firewall must include:
- Standard firewall capabilities like stateful inspection
- Integrated intrusion prevention
- Application awareness and control to see and block risky apps
- Threat intelligence sources
- Upgrade paths to include future information feeds to address evolving security threats today
What should you look for in a firewall?
The best next-generation firewalls deliver five core benefits to organisations, from SMBs to enterprises. Make sure your NGFW delivers:
1. Breach prevention and advanced security
The No. 1 job of a firewall should be to prevent breaches and keep your organisation safe. But since preventive measures will never be 100 percent effective, your firewall should also have advanced capabilities to quickly detect advanced malware if it evades your front-line defences. Invest in a firewall with the following capabilities:
- Prevention to stop attacks before they get inside
- A best-of-breed next-generation IPS built-in to spot stealthy threats and stop them fast
- URL filtering to enforce policies on hundreds of millions of URLs
- Built-in sandboxing and advanced malware protection that continuously analyses file behaviour to quickly detect and eliminate threats
- A world-class threat intelligence organisation that provides the firewall with the latest intelligence to stop emerging threats
2. Comprehensive network visibility
You can’t protect against what you can’t see. You need to monitor what is happening on your network at all times so you can spot bad behaviour and stop it fast. Your firewall should provide a holistic view of activity and full contextual awareness to see:
- Threat activity across users, hosts, networks, and devices
- Where and when a threat originated, where else it has been across your extended network, and what it is doing now
- Active applications and websites
- Communications between virtual machines, file transfers, and more
3. Flexible management and deployment options
- Whether you are a small to medium-sized business or a large enterprise, your firewall should meet your unique requirements:
- Management for every use case-choose from an on-box manager or centralised management across all appliances
- Deploy on-premises or in the cloud via a virtual firewall
- Customise with features that meet your needs-simply turn on subscriptions to get advanced capabilities
- Choose from a wide range of throughput speeds
4. Fastest time to detection
The current industry standard time to detect a threat is between 100 to 200 days; that is far too long. A next-generation firewall should be able to:
- Detect threats in seconds
- Detect the presence of a successful breach within hours or minutes
- Prioritise alerts so you can take swift and precise action to eliminate threats
- Make your life easier by deploying consistent policy that’s easy to maintain, with automatic enforcement across all the different facets of your organisation
5. Automation and product integrations
- Your next-generation firewall should not be a siloed tool. It should communicate and work together with the rest of your security architecture. Choose a firewall that:
- Seamlessly integrates with other tools from the same vendor
- Automatically shares threat information, event data, policy, and contextual information with email, web, endpoint, and network security tools
- Automates security tasks like impact assessment, policy management and tuning, and user identification
Explore Cisco Next Generation Firewalls
Traditional firewalls played a great part in blocking traditional threats but what with the latest increasingly complex threats and attacks you need a next-generation firewall (NGFW) providing a 3 times performance boost in comparison to the previous generation all fully integrated with Cisco Talos. The worlds largest private security team.
Contact us today for more information!
